IDEAS - YOURS, MINE OR EVERYBODY'S?
I have been doing more reading on this whole Intellectual Property thing. If I am not to fall foul of plagiarism charges I have a duty to know more than I already do; we all have the same duty. First off, the ownership of ideas is a very difficult subject for anyone to lay down hard and fast definitions on; there are different kinds of ideas and maybe different rules to cover this... that's why there are laws governing copyright (the key is in the word 'copy')and patents and trademarks and other forms of ownership. But even with these, the limits of what is allowed and what is not allowed isn't clear - even to an educated reader. This is why individual cases are so hotly and sometimes confusingly debated in courts of law, and the results of legal decisions do not always illuminate the rights and wrongs for anyone else to follow. And yet some internet 'trolls' seem to think it all so easy, and set themselves up as supreme judges of even tricky cases.
However, I found this piece on wikipaedia, and then found it posted in other places, too. It was quoted by a Harvard Law Professor in a book that looked at intellectual property. I quoted a part of it earlier on my blog thinking I was quoting this Law professor. So, here, I give it in its full form and I give it its correct attribution: Thomas Jefferson. I'd be interested to know what you think. It speaks sense to me.
Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.
—Thomas Jefferson , to Isaac McPherson 13 Aug. 1813 Writings
4 comments:
Douglas, I gave your blog an award today because I find this whole plagiarism/copyright subject helpful and fascinating.
Karen
Wow. Karen, I am both touched and honoured. I am also a little surprised. This has been a long hard year for me and I have read so much on the subject and have been trying to speak sense in the winds of so much objection from people I expected sense from.
Thank you for your vote of confidence.
I am also pleased that what I am writing is reaching someone out there and that it is considered helpful. I do not profess to be an expert on the subject, but I have thought about it a lot and I do believe that what I say makes sense. And there seems to be some support from some 'great minds'... as I have blogged about.
I also hope you are reading some of the work I am putting up here... that, after all, is what really matters.
Best wishes to you.
That is a great quote from Thomas Jefferson, Doug.
Thank you, Elaine, for popping by. It is a great quote and speaks volumes, I think, on the matter of ownership of ideas. However, I do not think that everyone understands the substance of what is said here.
It is the same with the Jonathan Lethem article you have referenced on your blog site. The subject is a sensitive one, because so many of us think our ideas are unique and come magically to us and so belong to us. Add to that the notion that ideas are sometimes what make a piece of writing successful, especially if the idea seems fresh, and you can see how writers would want protection of some kind. That is partly why this whole intellectual property debate still goes on. It is an artificial construct by the powers that be in society and goes against the natural law of transmission of ideas that has brought us to where we are now.
Lethem (and Gladwell in his essay called 'Something Borrowed') points out that ideas are not uniquely ours and if we throw them into the public domain or share them with anyone else we are gifting them to the world. The world cannot help but absorb the gifted idea and it is the nature of ideas that they will influence others... and these others should be allowed to be influenced.
It is a different matter when we are talking about words and particular arrangements of words (though Gladwell does question this too, questions whether arrangements of words can or should be protected). That is what the copyright laws are about. Not about ideas.
I continue to wrestle with the whole thorny subject. There is a lot of emotional hysteria attached to debates of the issue. And a lot of platform building and talk of moral high ground. It is good that you have drawn attention to Lethem's article... not because I think we should all think as he does (and I do - at this moment, anyway). But because people need to see that it is a more complex issue than they might at first think, and that their knee jerk reactions to 'plagiarism' require more intellectual understanding of the issue than they might currently have.
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